Idiot Plot: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Harry Potter]]'': The minor side-plot that gives name to the sixth book rests entirely upon it. It's traditional in British schools for teachers to keep their favourite moth-eaten, scrawled on textbooks in the book cupboard with the books normally passed out to the children who forget their books, resulting in plenty of amusing anecdotes about the fights kids get into to avoid being the one stuck with that torn copy despite the fact it's often the most useful book to end up with. Rowling clearly played on this, right down to Ron and Harry fighting over who got stuck with it, and yet somehow they were both completely incapable of ever wondering if it belonged to either the current or past Potions Master. Not even Hermione was capable of wondering what really should have been an obvious first suspicion for a British kid in a British school system to have. Of course, if they had jumped to the logical suspicion, the sixth book reveal would have happened at the start instead of the end - although that would not have changed the overall plot of the book in any significant way.

** In the ''Muggle'' British school system. Whether or not Wizarding schoolteachers do it is an open question.

** Continuing with the problems with Harry Potter, you really have to question why Dumbledore just didn't keep Harry in the loop. Some claim he didn't tell Harry everything as some sort of test to prove himself, but why? Or he wants to give Harry a normal childhood so he tries to protect him from it all, but Harry's evidently never going to get to be a normal kid since he ends up running into Voldemort practically all the time, so why keep sheltering him and never telling him anything? Why risk Harry getting killed if he's {{spoiler|the only one who can kill Voldemort?}} Dumbledore does so little to prepare Harry and after {{spoiler|Dumbledore's death, Harry has absolutely no guidance and can't talk to anyone except two other students. Dumbledore knew he'd be dying in advance so why didn't he leave him something more than a few cryptic clues?}} You also have to question Dumbledore's wisdom in telling all the students at the start of the first book, among them ''Fred and George'', whose curiousity will almost certainly be piqued because of the warning, not to try to get past a certain door. A certain door that can be unlocked with an alohomora charm and has an enormous, extremely dangerous multi-headed dog behind it, ready to maim anyone, adventurous student or not, who gets near? This is only one of the ''[[Idiot Ball]]''s flying around. Voldemort takes his own turn by never killing Harry when he has the chance. If he had, the books would have ended far sooner.

** You also have to wonder why Dumbledore didn't just {{spoiler|confront Draco the minute he learned the kid was trying to kill him. The case can be made that doing so would have wrecked Dumbledore's plan to have Snape kill him and win favor with Voldemort, but c'mon....does Rowling really expect us to believe that Dumbles KNEW Draco would smuggle Death Eaters into the school at the end of the year?}}